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March 30, 2006
Progress
While browsing through a 1902 copy of Przegl?d Techniczny in my library the other day I came across an advertisement for the "My Lord Coupe," a five-seater electrical car. Although it had a range of 80 kilometres there was one big drawback: charging the batteries took "a good four hours."
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2006
Bread and Circuses
Capote is not exactly the preposterous but coherent blockbuster full of wisecracks that I was looking for after the arthouse film festival but it was still a welcome change. Long pauses there were, but motivated. And yes, Capote does tell stories about his childhood but it's because he's speaking to someone else about childhood. The speakers in the film respond logically to one another.
The film, despite golden globes and glowing and well-deserved reviews attracted about 15 people. The film immediately before, Pride and Prejudice, was attended by two people (unless the outrageous English rosery had prompted a mass walkout earlier on). Various theories are advanced by people in the business to explain this bewildering decline in cinema-going. Bad sound. Uncomfortable seats. Not enough popcorn. I have my own theory though. It's ill-informed and based on dubious statistics but at least I can invoke Occam's razor: it's the obvious explanation.
About a dozen years ago a cinema ticket was three or four times as expensive as a loaf of bread. It is now 15 times as expensive. People are still eating bread but a lot of them are using the internet and watching splendid, sweeping cinematic shots of the Kansas plains on 16" VDUs.
Another of the bonuses of the arty film festival was that, presumably because you cannot readily download films like the Icelandic/Danish Dark Horse, the cinema was packed with people. Going to the cinema for the first time in a long time felt like going to the cinema. And there was no popcorn.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2006
Confessions of a Philistine
After a two-week season of foreign, art house films I'm looking forward to watching a few dumb American blockbusters. There were some good films at the festival but arty films have their cliches too. The long, long... long... silences... The monologic dialogues... The violence. The love of the grotesque. The silent mental collapse of strait-laced upstanding citizens. The sheer unhappiness of it all.
In my entire life no one has ever told me a childhood story but they do it all the time in art house films. Another cliche - so good it also crops up in mainstream cinema - goes as follows: two characters are having a conversation while engaged in some other activity (say, drinking coffee). One asks the other a question - not small talk about the weather because only people in the real world do that - but an innocent enough question, like, say: "How long have you been a lorry driver?" Before answering, the other character will drop two lumps of sugar into his coffee, stir them in, add milk, pick up the cup, light a cigarette, inhale, drink the coffee, exhale, set down the coffee, look away over to the right, look down at his shoes, take another puff of the cigarette, then fix his eyes on his interlocutor for a few seconds and only then answer the question: "we're all lorry drivers".
That is, of course, if you're lucky enough to get an answer. Characters in art house films rarely engage in anything so mundane as talking to each other. They talk at each other, across, over, against each other, but to each other? No. This is why there are so many understandings between people in such films. It never occurs to anyone to ask for clarification. Apparently a lengthy silence and "when I was six years old my mother died in a car crash" is an entirely satisfactory answer to the question "are you sleeping with Hank?"
One other cliche of art house films is that despite all the weirdness there is never, ever, a WTF moment. Nothing fazes people in arty films. If something so sudden and shocking happens that you, the viewer, leap out of your seat and scream the most that will happen on screen is someone will pace up and down a little. You can see this quite clearly in Hidden.
Consider what Trading Places would have been like as an arty European production. The two old botchers would never have had to explain to Eddie Murphy what was going on. Both he and Dan Akroyd would simply have accepted their changes of circumstances.
At least three of the films I saw at the festival used an artistic device that goes by the technical term of "cheating". One otherwise good film, for example, started at the end. We clearly see character X die. The rest of the film relates the events leading up to the death of - no, not character X, but of character Y. That's right: when the opening scenes are replayed at the end of the film a different person dies. I don't think a Hollywood screenwriter would have gotten away with that.
So I'm looking forward to a film where every line of dialogue is a wisecrack directly related to a preposterous but coherent plot. Yes, realism is what it's all about.
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2006
The Dreaded Meeja
In the previous post I mentioned the punishment by the National Commission for Being a Good Little Boy of a TV station for allowing a guest (Kazimiera Szczuka) on a show to mock the voice of a physically handicapped woman. In an admirable display of solidarity, Gazeta Wyborcza printed a trancript of the relevant part of the interview on March 18th, complete with stage directions: "[here Szczuka tries to imitate her high-pitched, prayerful timbre]". The real name of the National Commission for etc etc is "The National Commission for Radio and Television" - not newspapers. In an interesting parallel with Ireland of years gone by, TV is more jealously guarded (read: "censored") by the authorities than the press. Whether this is because the press has been tamed or because no one cares what intellectuals who read books and newspapers think I leave up to the reader.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:06 PM | Comments (2)
March 20, 2006
Untitled
Some random absurdities, all from just one issue of Gazeta Wyborcza.
The Belarussian KGB has branded the Lukaszenko opposition terrorists. The newspaper is up in arms. Only GW Bush (if you're not with us you're against us) is allowed brand the opposition "terrorist".
Marek Zuber, adviser to Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, has admitted in the Financial Times that he does not understand what Marcinkiewicz's party is doing.
In the run-up to a day of anti-war protests, Viceminister for Education Jaros?aw Zieli?ski wrote a letter to school superintendants warning them to be on their guard against ecologists and pacifists, who might have a bad influence on school children. Green and anti-war organisations might be being manipulated by sinister forces. What sinsister forces - alas - he cannot say, as it is confidential. "Please treat me and my letter seriously", he adds pathetically. This interference tactic is well-known in internet circles, where it is widely believed that the helpful anonymous poster who says that certain elements have hi-jacked the forthcoming anti-racism/anti-war/anti-bin tax demonstration is usually a policeman trying to scare off popular support.
Here's an interesting one: no less than 7 state organs are permitted to tap telephones in Poland. An eighth one is in the pipeline.
Incredibly, a white-collar criminal has been sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Among his victims was a Brazilian footballer called Romario. It is not known if the judge was a soccer fan.
A television station has been fined by the National Commission for Being a Good Little Boy because a guest on a programme imitated the voice of a young woman who broadcasts on a radio station. The young woman, you see, is physically handicapped. Also - and entirely unconnected to the matter - she broadcasts on the ultra-conservative, Catholic and pro-government Radio Maryja.
Moving on, there is a full-page ad (one of many in your eco-friendly GW) for a car. At the top of the page the price is proudly trumpeted: "from 17,345 zloties". There is an asterix beside the price. Probably the ex-works price, you think, before checking the small print at the bottom of the page to be sure. Alas, no. The small print reads: "the figure given is 50% of the promotional price..." I am not making this up.
On the bottom of page 13 is a short paragraph describing what is claimed to be the largest American air operation since the start of the "armed intervention" (or "invasion") in Iraq. Lest the prominence given to this event lead you astray let me remind you: Poland is one of the occupying powers in Iraq.
More advertising: a joke that got old fast. An airline is selling flights from Krakow to Oslo for from 145 zloties (one-way, excluding taxes and fees). I went to their website and checked prices. You will have to wait until mid-July before you can avail of the 145 zloty fare and the final price is 185 zloties.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
I believe the word is "extraordinary"...
...as in "extraordinary outburst". Today's Fakt, a Polish tabloid, carries one on the front page from ?ukasz Warzecha. "I am convulsed with anger!" it begins (exclamation marks, in fairness, are commoner in Polish than in English). He is angry that Poland does not kill certain criminals and angry at the "know-alls" who sympathise with the criminal rather than the victims. (He has in mind little children in particular.) "Where is your conscience?" he demands of, I gather, "probation officers and little madams from social services". And to put the "extra"in extraordinary: "you are no better than the degenerates". The headline? "You are all guilty"*.
Just in case you thought it was only in America that liberals were equated with murderers and perverts.
* I believe it is customary in such cases to say "we", in recognition of the fact that in a democracy all citizens of voting age must assume some share of blame for the state of the nation.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2006
Syriana II
Syriana seems to be sowing confusion right and left. A correspondent to the Irish Times compares the verdicts of Charles Krauthammer and Michael Dwyer (IT's film critic). For Krauthammer the plot was "near-incomprehensible". O'Dwyer wrote: "Demanding the attention of its audience, Syriana proves thoroughly satisfying and accessible. . ."
The review by the eminent film critic Krauthammer appears under the headline "Feeding our enemies hatred." Well, at least some one is feeding them.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:14 PM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2006
It's all Politics
Syriana was reviewed by both Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita on March 3rd. But did the reviewers see the same version? Poor Jacek Szczerba in GW seems to be under the impression that it is a documentary: he praises the US for allowing this pack of anti-US lies to be produced and distributed, even though it "stinks of poster paint". If McCarthy were alive, he jokes (ha ha), he would be raising the alarm about crypto-communists in the American film industry.
Rafal Swiatek for Rzeczpospolita, on the contrary, says the film "avoids demagogic tricks" and conveys its message in an understated way.
Is Rafal Swiatek blind to propaganda or has Gazeta Wyborcza's devotion to the US surpassed that of Tony Blair?
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:41 PM | Comments (3)